Posts by TracyMac
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Whether it is consciously acknowledged or not, civilised society (i.e. the rule of law) absolutely requires such threats as police beatings and prison rape to function.
Wow, I've totally missed the part in any court sentencing where "rape twice a day" and "get assaulted by cops 5 times before being incarcerated" are handed out as part of the penalty. That "rule of LAW" is an interesting thing, isn't it?
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Yeah, this sniping at the PM is a bit ridiculous, frankly. Imagine the outcry if he DIDN'T turn up. I'm no fan of the man, but he's doing his job.
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...Not that I seriously believe that those proposals would ever gain traction. Did I mention I'm an anarchist, philosophically? :-} (In terms of wild and unrealistic idealism - still pay taxes and vote though)
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Yes, going right back to the beginning of the thread, I was also kindly advised by I/S that if I don't want to get married, I shouldn't. Thanks so much for that observation, not that I have any choice anyway. Both from the queer side and from the poly side.
And I love how many people here are all happy to get me one set of rights, but are all about implying multiple relationships are SOMETHING ELSE that CAN'T POSSIBLY be wanted by sane people. Thanks for that too.
What pisses me off, now that we come down to it, is this automatic privileging of one relationship paradigm over any other. To insist that these days it's entirely free of religious connotation seems pretty disingenuous. Why are so many people so against this right being extended across the board except if not because of their religious hang-ups? (Oh, ok, you can get people who are anti-gay out of pure bigotry, but the "protect holy matrimony at all costs" kind seem to be mainly the Christian moderate to right-wing).
To be totally honest, I think it should all be civil contracts, because legal marriage entails a whole bunch of property and inheritance rights, guardianship of children, powers of attorney (healthwise) etc etc etc. To enact these things individually costs a bomb and requires a lawyer. So why not make the Public Trust Office the registrar of such things at a nominal sum, and if you want to do the whole package with one person only, and call it "marriage", great, go to it.
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I'm not in favour of marriage at all, personally - I think it should ALL be civil unions. You want to have a ceremony under the auspices of your god, great, go to it - I just don't think that should have any legal relevance.
That being said, as has been observed, us queers ARE still second-class citizens when it comes to relationship recognition. Also, I don't think they've sorted the adoption issue either, have they? Can a gay COUPLE adopt children? (A gay individual can.)
And actually, being polyamorous, I'm in favour of having some kind of legal recognition of multiple relationships (can we please not use the word "polygamy", ugh. It's correct in terms of multiple marriage, but the connotations...), rather than the current bodge job of financial contracts, powers of attorney and the like that people currently cobble together.
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Tweeting by leaving a voicemail will be somewhat limited if the mobile networks are down. What's the penetration of landlines in Egypt - especially amongst the poor - vs mobile phones that everyone seems to have?
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One more request. Can you bring back the font size widget? It's ok when I read PA at work, because I have a relatively low-res monitor, but my nice lappie at home has a high resolution. I have my Firefox font size set well for the vast majority of sites for the screen resolution, but this one hurts my eyes. It'd be nice not to have to CTRL-+ and just have a cookie set instead.
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I definitely agree that the genre of "virtual worlds"/cyberpunk was definitely coming along from the late 70s with Sterling, Dick et al. Can't quite place Orwell on that spectrum though.
But I do think some movies can kick things along - yes, the literature is bubbling along under the surface, but there is a seminal work - like Neuromancer - that ramps it into a higher gear. And sometimes a movie can be the seminal work - look at Bladerunner. Do Androids Dream... has an amusing premise, but my god it's a boring story. The movie is something else.
This doesn't negate the fact that the vast majority of SFF movies are retrograde and simplistic, although I suppose a lot of SFF novels are too ( Eragon and the Belgariad saga, anyone?). It's nice when a good movie epitomises or even slightly anticipates the crest of a genre - I think the original Tron, despite its faults (Bechdel Test, lol), sits in there.
While I found Avatar an entertaining movie, yeah, simplistic in the extreme, and I could have done without the retrograde "white man becomes better native than the natives (or native-messiah) and saves their useless butts." I don't mind Cameron's "one person rebels against soulless rapacious corporation" trope, but man, it didn't need to be word-for-word Aliens - and the irony of his making megabux from these Hollywood movies is amusing.
Also, *waves at Craig*. Been seeing you on TBD, where I very occasionally comment as Trix.
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...oh, and to throw a cat in amongst the pigeons of so-serious sci-fi fandom, would Neuromancer have been so popular without Tron preparing the way in a visual sense? I wonder.
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To be honest, I didn't think the script in the first Tron movie was that great, although there were a few decent one-liners. Also, never been a Jeff Bridges fan.
What blew me away when I was 13 was the music - awesome Wendy Carlos - and the effects.
Also, I did some musing elsewhere on how Tron almost anticipates the whole cyberpunk genre. Gibson's first short story in that line came out the same year Tron did, and Neuromancer wasn't published till 2 years later. There is apparently a seminal cyberpunk story that was written in the late-70s, but I haven't read it and can't comment on how much it might have influenced the movie and Gibson.
We'll just leave out the whole Macguffinitude of the light bikes - would you seriously need something like that to get around a virtual world? Or were they shoehorned in to entertain adolescent boys and provide an excuse for shiny effects? (This is not a serious question - they did/do look cool.)